


[GATSBY/NICK]Unreliable narrator

by fantian



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1974), The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: M/M, and regret really quick, gatsby(top)/nick(bottom), he recovered like a miracle, like in the next morning, nick made love with him, so gatsby didnt died, so he run away
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27560098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fantian/pseuds/fantian
Summary: Gatsby rouse form his death or didnt die at all,the funeral had no guest and didnt even held,Anyhow, Nick still published his novel successfully.excerpt:After writing the entire first draft of my novel, I slept on the couch all night. That left me with pneumonia and a high fever the next day. Before I was awake, the doctors moved me to the hospital, which in turn put me in a nursing home.They said it was better for me than the little house I had in West Egg. I needed rest, both physically and mentally.They were right, for the most part. Except that Gatsby was there, too, and I didn't want to see him. His death was a tragedy, and the resurrection from the dead is a ludicrous sequel to the tragedy, erasing the tragedy's own beauty and being unattractive on its own.
Relationships: Nick Carraway/Jay Gatsby
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> im chinese and the original version of this work is chinese. I use "deepl pro" to translate it so its reasonable if you feel the grammar is weird while reading.If you wanna read the exact version, you can try read the chinese one.

After writing the entire first draft of my novel, I slept on the couch all night. That left me with pneumonia and a high fever the next day. Before I was awake, the doctors moved me to the hospital, which in turn put me in a nursing home.

They said it was better for me than the little house I had in West Egg. I needed rest, both physically and mentally.

They were right, for the most part. Except that Gatsby was there, too, and I didn't want to see him. His death was a tragedy, and the resurrection from the dead is a ludicrous sequel to the tragedy, erasing the tragedy's own beauty and being unattractive on its own.

If Gatsby's resurrection had been complete, the one where he sits up in his hospital bed, nervously smoothing the folds of his gown, calling everyone he meets old friends - then I would have loved the return again after this ending, and I would have clapped and cheered happily.

Unfortunately that's not the case. The doctors pronounce Gatsby dead. They say the bullet went through the gap between Jay's ribs, and like a miracle, it went out just five millimeters past the side of his heart. I thought maybe Jay really was a child of God, maybe he had been born in the dust but leapt into the sky, and God had blessed him and was pleased with him.

But three days later, the conclusion turned out to be that Mr. Gatsby had, at best, a week to live. Maybe you'll want to take care of his funeral beforehand.

They thought I was a distant relative or brother of Gatsby's. I didn't argue. I saw Gatsby in his hospital bed, in a half-used gown with blue and white stripes, paler than the yellowed clothing. Everyone would have said it was a dead man. His life was tied to an IV tube and liquid food at his bedside, but his own spirit was nowhere to be found, having fallen from the sky long ago. I found myself no longer able to think of the body lying in the bed as an old friend - Gatsby - or Jay.

It was just a living corpse.

I call. I send letters. I strain my tongue. I go to see him in the hospital, his body, his eyes that he never opens. I'm more enthusiastic on the phone than on Wall Street, coming up with reason after reason to lure people into a funeral that has yet to take place and where no one has died. I was more silent in the hospital than at the cemetery. When I look at his lips, the clear drops of fluid dripping slowly from the IV tube, my mind goes blank. I would sit there for ten minutes or half a day, and when I got up I would feel like I had just taken my seat the previous second. I don't think anything. Say nothing.

I'm waiting for his death, the funeral, the guests. I realize - I'm waiting for it all to finally draw to rest, his face that was alive a week ago has faded so fast that it's only a light dust mark in my brain. I wanted to rip out the pipes that had kept him from dying, an urge that was especially strong when I realized I hadn't brought in any customers for his funeral.

But he didn't die. His body lived longer than anyone thought it would. Too long.

Wolfsam had only paid his medical bills for a month, even though he had made him a thousand times more money than that, and those gold coins were jingling in his pockets. He came to see Gatsby only once, and I could see by the look in his eyes that he in no way believed that Gatsby would ever be of use to him again, so he never came again. Never picked up a Gatsby-related phone call again, let alone initiated one.

If no one could fill the gap in the medical bills, Gatsby would simply die, as I thought he would.

On the battlefield, I once killed a fellow soldier. His lower body was shattered by a mine and his fingers grabbed my pant leg and begged me to give him a bullet, which I did. Gatsby, even if he woke up, would only find that everything he fought for was once again far away, whether it was his flowers or his mansion fortune, all gone to nothing.

I'd killed once, I could do it again.

I called my father, a small cold and exhaustion making me sound as if I was seriously ill. I told him I wanted money because I was "emotionally wounded", I needed to see the most expensive psychiatrist, I had to buy the best wine. I need to see the most expensive psychiatrist, I need to buy the best booze, so I can get out or I'm going to die - and he believed me right away. Or just being considerate enough not to poke holes in my lies. Anyway, in the end I got a large sum of money and gave it all to the sanitarium, enough to keep Gatsby's shell alive until the time when it got tired of everything it was now retaining.

I went to see a psychiatrist like I said on the phone. Not the most expensive or the best. All he did was suggest that I write everything down, provide me with a typewriter, three meals and a bed, even though I spent most of my time sleeping straight through on the couch. He was more of a housekeeper or an editor than a psychiatrist.

When I woke up in the sanitarium, there were many messages that desperately needed my listening ear. The first was from the psychiatrist. He had loaned my manuscript to an old editorial friend for a look, and the publisher was willing to buy the story for a very good price. I had no intention of publishing the story, at least not in this city. But if it was on the other side of the United States, a place where I had never heard of Gatsby or even the Buchanan family name, or even a foreign country - well, I wouldn't necessarily say no. Censoring is necessary, erasing everything that is real and leaving just the story. It's a shitty story, so I want more people to suffer for it. Let them go far into a funeral that Gatsby did not hold.

The second message comes from inside the sanitarium.

"Gatsby's awake." The nurse relayed it to me. Outside the door, the iron wheels of the wheelchair roll across the floor. A pale Gatsby looked at me moodily from his wheelchair and, after a long moment, raised a tired but sincere smile at me.

Behind him, the blue sky bloomed on the window.


	2. Chapter 2

-2-

Gatsby said that his life would be like the stars rising steadily. But clusters of stars are only the illusory light of distant celestial bodies delaying their arrival, while blazing meteors will eventually fall. I don't know where he first saw it and chose this metaphor for himself.

And yet he does rise in perpetual knots. Of all the stars, only this one rises eternally.

Ever since Gatsby woke up, the doctors have been amazed at the speed with which his body has healed. The gunshot wound had long since healed during Gatsby's long coma, his muscles and bones yearning to touch the sun again. My pneumonia, however, was out of control, good and bad, and I had to spend most of the day in a hospital bed and coughing.

I'm not a talkative person myself, and my hoarse voice further robs me of my ability to speak. But it's also true that my spirits were low, and I felt more relaxed without having to talk.

The only long conversation I have had since waking was between me in my bed and Gatsby in his wheelchair. Our faces were each pale and our voices similarly hoarse, so neither of us was in the mood to wrap up the real purpose with much adornment.

"I read the paper." He said to me first, looking downcast but chesty: "Daisy and he went - on holiday. But she called me first. I'm the one who missed her."

There was a persuasion lurking in his words, a desire to tell me that everything was his fault and that Daisy was as pure as a summer flower that never wilted. It's like he took the fall for Daisy's car wreck and ended up getting shot right through the head. It didn't surprise me that he would even continue this act - but I no longer had the heart to cover up anything for anyone either.

"That was my call," I told him dryly, "Daisy neither dialed you, nor wanted to attend your funeral."

He looked a little confused, but oddly not disappointed.

"A funeral ...... I had a funeral?"

"The doctor says you have at most a week to live. I had to prepare for your funeral first. But I couldn't-" I coughed twice, and he thoughtfully patted me on the back, so I swallowed the fact that it was almost out of my mouth and instead said, "But you didn't die. There's no need for a funeral."

Gatsby was silent, and I couldn't tell what he was thinking. Driven by a kind of inertia, I stared at the skin on his cheeks (which had a lot of unshaven stubble) and fell back into the usual blankness that comes with looking at his living body. I don't know how long passed before he finally said, "You've done so much for me ...... Nick."

Nick. I doubt that's the first time he's ever called me by that name. He sounded raw, a fruit that was still unripe. Maybe it would become sweet in the future, but chewing it now would only be sour.

I could only smile at him and shake my head. In the end, I had done so little. I didn't bring any guests to his funeral, and the money to help him live and eventually come back to life came from Callaway, not Nick. But I didn't put the effort into getting him to agree with that, because I knew he wouldn't be convinced.

Gatsby looked like he was still thinking as he was wheeled away by the nurse. He always had a look of deep conviction, like a traveller deciding how to reach an inevitable destination. He had only success in his plans for the future, which made me wonder how the future would have changed if he had died in the shooting. No one would be swimming against the tide anymore, we would all be going down the waterfall and off the cliff.

After about a week Gatsby was able to move about freely, often leaving the sanatorium for three to five days before returning to check on me and visit me once. Most of the money that had been paid to the nursing home was left, and I told the doctors to give it to Gatsby. I couldn't imagine how he would take the first step again after losing everything and I hoped he wouldn't have to repeat the path he had taken.With Daisy gone, there was no need for Gatsby to act too eagerly. After all, no one was waiting for him to be able to step back into the dream with him five years ago.

I had thought it would take a great deal of effort to get Gatsby to accept the money. But he accepted my gift as readily as he had given it to me. I was relaxed in not having to spend more than I had to, happy with the ending. But my pneumonia wasn't as understanding as Gatsby's, it came back with a frequency that made the doctors groan, and fever became a regular occurrence. I'm not as worried as these professionals generally are. Since Gatsby's real resurrection, a kind of vitality has been awakened in my body. In other words, I believed in my recovery as much as Gatsby believed in his ultimate success.

When the first snow of winter came, Gatsby came to visit me again. I waited for him in front of the huge windows. All the scenery was shivering in the wind, the pleasant golden-red hues of autumn had disappeared, and everything was covered with the color of skeletons, dust and coal, and the tiny flakes of snow in the air made the scenery a rare novelty. The car in which Gatsby was travelling cut across the pale road, not very fast, and not driven by him. I'm glad we all learned something somewhat from that crash. He got out of the car and looked up with a seeming sense of relief after slapping the non-existent dust off his clothes. We meet eyes and he raises his hand to me, smiling after I smile, then wraps up in his windbreaker and hurries upstairs.

"Maybe you should wear more. Nikki. It'll do you good for your illness." That was the first thing he said when he entered the room. I nodded indifferently, watching the tiny snowflakes melt into tiny trails of water on his trench coat.

"These clothes are coming from the right place," Gatsby said abruptly, "I don't work for Wolfsam anymore."

This defense makes me want to laugh. He wanted to prove something but chose the wrong audience. I never thought bootleggers were such an unorthodox profession to begin with. Tom was righteously critical of them and didn't stop at the drugstore himself. But leaving Wolfsheim was a real celebration. If Tom and suddenly Daisy were paralyzed by the idea of retreating into the arms of money after hurting someone, Wolfsheim was the one who could take pleasure in the hurt.

I nodded. Gatsby looked around, forgetting to take off his trench coat. The snow was getting heavier and heavier, huge, soft white flowers swirling and descending from the sky, and the whole sanatorium was but a tiny ornament in a ball of snowflakes.

He dragged a chair from the tea table to the bed, warmed his hands and then pushed me into the bed to lie down, eagerly tucking me in. I tried to tell him that I had been getting better and that he was the one who had dead once. But Gatsby's overtures were too sincere for anyone to refuse. If he wanted to please Tom, I'm sure he could. He just didn't want to live with Daisy in the shadows.

"I heard from the doctor that you're recovering." He looked me straight in the eye with concern, the pallor that had once been on the verge of death had melted away without a trace. I nodded, but Gatsby still wasn't satisfied.

"Are you still unable to speak?" He asked.

"Oh ...... just getting used to it." I mumbled. Not many people in the sanatorium would talk to me at length except Gatsby, and the last few times he'd come to visit me he'd confided in me unilaterally, probably to take care of my unhealed voice. I was slowly getting used to writing to my few old friends on letterhead, my vocal cords discarded.

"Good. You're healing. There's nothing better than that." Gatsby said, taking my hand in his, as if the fact itself brought him such overwhelming joy that he couldn't speak. Feeling both flattered and embarrassed, I had to take the vellum-wrapped book from the nightstand and hand it to Gatsby.

"Here's my manuscript," I told him.Gatsby stared at the vellum wrapping at a loss for words and looked at me questioningly. I pull the paper string from the package and ask him to unwrap it to see the contents.

Gatsby did so. After opening the vellum, the first page was a somewhat yellowed and old printout. Above the printout Gatsby left a few remarkable words in my handwriting.

Gatsby scrutinized the paper, and for a moment he looked as if he were looking at the sun up close, with an inevitable expression of being burned by the light.

"Here's your story," I said with an air of relief, "If you died, I'd publish it. But you're here, so it belongs to you. You can publish it if you want or throw it away."

Gatsby looked up at me in dazed panic, his fingers pressed dead on the page.

"My story ......?" He said incredulously, "Old friend - Nick. Nick. This is a book about me?"

"I think you deserve a book," I said decisively, "It's yours."

"No, no!" Gatsby sprang to his feet, still holding the pile of manuscripts in his hands, and he gasped and stared at me so intently, almost like a puppy that had fallen into the water, that I even began to feel sorry for him. He was silent for a few moments, its agitated silence, and then finally was able to say, barely smoothly, "Nope. Nikki. Of course it's your book. It's completely yours. You're the author. Can I - can I - can I take it and read it? You have other copies, don't you?"

I nodded cryptically. Gatsby walks twice around the hospital bed in a hurry, squeezes my shoulder hard, and rushes down the stairs. His car had gone from dark black to light grey and I suspected the driver was frozen in the driver's seat. Gatsby's figure appeared outside the hospital towards the car, and then paused sharply as he stepped onto the snow and came running back to the sanatorium again.

Soon the door to the ward was flung open again. He stood there in the doorway, his head covered in snow, his blue eyes reflecting the pale sky light of the snowy day, and just stood there, no longer entering, and spoke up urgently, "I've bought a new house. It's not far from your original home, Nikki. It has a big fireplace in it, and a study. When spring comes, I'll have flowers planted in the yard. It's not as big as the house I have here. But that fireplace ...... it's warm."

I looked at him blankly.

His eyes fell on me. After a moment, he moved away again. He said, "Nick. I appreciate you."

Without waiting for me to say anything in response, Gatsby had turned around and left, walking quickly all the way into his white car. I watched as the car started up with difficulty and drove slowly away from the nursing home gates, quickly shrinking into an unreadable dot that blended into the color of the dust around it.


	3. Chapter 3

The first snowflake took a long time to completely melt. Before that, a second flurry of snow had arrived. The sky was forever white with broken whiteness, and day after day the sun gave only a weak, pale glow. On the passageway in and out of the sanatorium, the cleaners shoveled snow endlesslly until frostbite covered their hands, yet the snow had no desire to abate.  
Gatsby had not come to visit for more than a month from the time I delivered the manuscript. In fact, it was odd that he had come to talk to me every week before instead. New York is the City of Desire, and if there's anywhere that can help you realize your most absurd dreams, it's New York. But Gatsby had already lived his dream - and then experienced its shattering. All that's left for him in New York is some old memories that he needs to escape. In order to leave Wolfsheim and achieve something of his own, he must leave this dream city which built from the fantasies of all its inhabitants. Taking long train rides back to New York every week just to see me were pure waste, after all, even Daisy wasn't in the city. Perhaps he had finally come to terms with that fact and moved his gaze back to the distant starry sky.  
I spent most of my short winter daylight hours rewriting the first draft of my novel. Erasing the appearance of Daisy and Gatsby, erasing all the excess color that wrapped around the story's core, until only the Eye of God remained on the page, standing tall and staring at the ink residue.  
After that I wrap a new set of skins around the core. Each character gets a different body and name ...... In addition to an unchanging mind, even Tom, who happens to have never tried to understand Daisy's mind, could not possibly think that the heroine of the story bears any resemblance to his wife. I let the protagonist of this story die, just as I thought Gatsby would die. I give him a funeral, with only me standing at his grave, just as he did at his unconducted funeral. I arranged an image of myself in the story as depressed, haunted by a long mental illness, as a penance for all that had happened in the past and with all that I had written. I deliberated over the words, selecting the right ones, carefully setting them on Gatsby's paper crown until he shone brighter than all the upper class nobility.  
On the night when the first draft was finished, the moon was much dimmer than usual. But the stars shone brightly, like a glittering snowfall, and filled the sky. Under the stars, Gatsby walked through the snow into the courtyard, and then slowly made his way to my ward.  
He looked tired, but ambitious, his life piercing his blue skin and glistening in the air. I was working on my manuscript at my desk and didn't notice him looking. By the time I turned back, his jacket was soaked in snow, but he seemed unaware of it, unmoving, just staring at my back with a frown.  
"Oh!" I was shocked and took a big step over to change him. He meekly allowed me to take off his coat and put his robe back on, his eyes still on the direction of the desk. I could smell gin in his hair, mixed with snow grains, and the liquor was as hot as a bonfire on a frozen day.  
"Are you okay?" I led him to the table and sat down, pressing him into the chair closest to the fireplace. Gatsby woke with a start and looked up at me suddenly, like a thoroughly upper-class aristocrat even in a subconscious act of rudeness.  
"I'm fine." He mumbled, "I couldn't be better."  
I think Gatsby was probably drunk.  
"Is this about Daisy?" I asked. It was an unthought question. Gatsby's death had something to do with Daisy, so his resurrection could not be completely separated from her.  
But Gatsby, wrapped tightly in his bathrobe and shrinking into his chair, looking a little groggy, shook his head.  
I'm good at listening, but not at talking. Usually, if you wait quietly, the dark, sad and false confessions will jump into the trap by themselves. Once the sharing starts, the percentage of truths can only gets higher. By the end, the guys will often be bawling on me, choking up and detailing his failures and pain. When I don't want to hear these overly personal dissections, it takes a lot of effort for me to escape. But when I don't want to run away, all I have to do is wait.  
After the blood creeps back into his face, Gates speaks like I thought he would.  
"It's almost New Year's, Nikki." He said, not looking in my direction, "Where do you want to go? We didn't celebrate your thirtieth birthday - and now it's all going to be New Year's."  
Before I could make any noise, Gatsby held out a hand to silence me. I shut my mouth helplessly, allowing him to continue this personal statement called conversation.  
"The sanatorium? NO. NOT. That's too bleak, spending New Year's in a hospital, and I can't stand that. I visited your cottage - it's being occupied by a new resident who asked me to take the books you left behind. Are you going home? Back to your original home? But you had a hard time getting out of there. You want to make a career of your own, so naturally you can't go back before you've made it."  
I wanted to tell him that I had in fact already admitted defeat to my father and taken a large pickup from the family. Apparently he didn't know where that money came from, and perhaps thought it was my own savings. Still, Gatsby didn't stop, and it took him a long time to tell me what he really wanted.  
"That new house in Louisville has been fitted with bookcases. I've put in all the books I brought from your cabin, but the bookcases are still so empty. Nikki, you should buy more books and fill that up."  
I doubted my understanding.  
"Gatsby, are you inviting me to live in your house?"  
"It's your house too. There's a part of you in everything, Nick. There's a part of you in my life, too."  
"It wasn't me who got you back, it was the doctors." I subconsciously countered his overly intense gratitude. I didn't deserve that much, and Gatsby had put himself in too low a position.  
"I almost died, Nick. When I woke up and you told me that Daisy had never called me, I found myself dying once again. This time it was complete." Gatsby said slowly, "I no longer have a future. Without Daisy, how and what does my future mean? She and Tom had a daughter, and the child was so lovely, so identical with her, that she must have grown up to be a beauty, and it would have been willing to ask people to die for her. How funny it is that I collect every newspaper about her, only to learn after death that she had a daughter."  
It finally dawned on him that Daisy would never and could never go back to that night five years ago. Her beautiful flowers had long since borne fruit in the autumn wind and would never bloom again all for Gatsby. New York without Daisy was like a jewelry box with a missing ring, its beautiful black velvet surface no longer bringing Gatsby any joy. In the mansion, where the green light flashes, only the servants and untouched luxury clothes remain. The ever-burning fire in Gatsby's shell was quietly extinguished with the fact that Daisy would never return to his arms.  
After that, Gatsby decided to think of himself as a man who had died. The only thing that kept him going was to repay me for being his "loyal" friend. The assets he had left for Daisy, carefully hidden from Wolfsheim's eyes, were the seeds of his re-emergence. He wanted to give me back a beautiful house, a thousand times larger than my cabin and a thousand times more expensive than the money I had given him, a house that would have a fireplace warm enough to keep any of its occupants from getting sick as long as it existed. The winter will be warmer than the spring. By the time he gave me the keys to that house, he could end his life that had long since ended. He doesn't need any burial except for the memory of Daisy. Everything would come to an end, albeit a little late.  
Yet it was during that meeting that I handed him my manuscript.  
"I never thought there would be a book about me," Gatsby said.  
He believed he would succeed. All of Gatsby's desire and determination began with "Cowboy Cassidy. As the book's story goes, he believed he was a son of God who would get all the wealth and fame and even true love. But a book itself. A book with a story about himself hadn't came to him in even his wildest dreams.  
"I'm completely disoriented and I don't know what to do." His words were full of great pent-up emotion, and made an odd dull echo like that of a volcano about to erupt. But at the same time, the tone was more erratic than the chanting of a sleeping man, tugging my spirit to dive into his dreams together, "So I started reading the book you wrote for me. I read it over ...... and over ...... until I lost count of the number of times I've opened it. God, you've given me so much praise. And I forget my ambitions, the promises I made, and just want to end it all. If I did die, I wouldn't deserve to be the main character of this book ...... How regrettable that would be. Anyway, this is a book about me isn't it."  
"So, Nick." He said begrudgingly, "At least come see our house. That fireplace is far warmer than it is here."  
I understand immdiately that any response that wasn't consent would have caused Gatsby's brand new fragile dream to collapse, shattering into tiny pieces of stained glass on the snow-white brick floor of the sanatorium. In this dream, Gatsby is both stronger than God and more fragile than a baby. I couldn't say anything more than to agree with everything he had planned.


	4. Chapter 4

It has been a colder, and longer winter than ever before. On days when it does not snow, the snow of yesteryear melts by the grain, and it takes most of the day for each grain to leave its companion. When the streets reveal themselves, the eaves drip in the afternoon, and hopes rise that winter is over, the next snow comes, covering the old snow and sludge, obliterating the distinction between city and wilderness with undiluted titanium white paste. It was the year when white was most hated, when couples more conservative than priests preferred to marry in black robes. Wedding dresses had never sold so poorly.  
Gatsby's newly renovated villa (some servants insisted on calling it a castle) would have been overcrowded if one could have sensed the hot springs in the cold plains from as far away as an animal and had no moral code to prevent them from running to the heat. The huge fireplace in the drawing room was almost a bonfire, but the smoke is vented up the chimney into the white sky, and it is hard to smell the coals even if you get close to the fireplace ...... Children will reach out and touch the flames because they believe it's just fluttering red rags ,end up with tiny arms scorched. Constant stream of hot air flow inside invisible Metal pipes lead into even the most inconspicuous room in the building. I believe this castle hides a more complex mental network than railroad networks in United States, with some little pixies smaller than a fingernail driving the burning train in those pipes without sleep. Pneumonia is throbbing in this pleasant spring-like heat and falling away before the winter is half over. I was completely healed at a time when countless others were beginning to get typhoid fever.  
Gatsby, the real master of the castle, was always unpredictable. Sometimes he would appear at the dining table to have breakfast with me, and then disappear mysteriously. More often I saw his back in the corner of the corridor, only to find out it was just a giant vase. I developed a theory: perhaps Gatsby's way of getting money nowadays is to be a magician, grab little birds with colored feathers which always carrying the audience's gold ring or purse in its yellow beak from audiences collar. But as far as Gatsby's account, he is running a chain of drugstores - and privately sells alcohol, but insisted that's only to keep from being targeted and marginalized by the liquor sellers, and the focus is on the drugstores themselves.  
This winter has bankrupted a lot of people, especially the small pharmacies and grocery stores. No one was happy to risk turning into an ice sculpture stronger than a street lamp just to buy a bottle of sweet sparkling water. This gave Gatsby the opportunity to expand his business in a big way, and both buyers and sellers were very proud of it. The original owner of the shop was given winter funds and was full of the belief that Gatsby was a wrongdoer who couldn't read the market. The news papers were full of articles about the Little Ice Age, all of them claiming that the winter would only get colder every year and that the summer would drop to the same temperature as the fall. It's "a blessing in disguise" that you didn't go broke this year, because you'll be facing the inevitable next year, and the guys who went broke this year will be able to find a new life sooner. Gatsby, on the other hand, is confident that the coming summer will be the most pleasant year ever for temperatures, and that his business will be as full of golden ears as the productive crops.  
"After all, old sport, it's been an awfully hot summer this year." He told me so.  
Too much business had brought him back to his old habit of stuffing himself into that invented shell and continuing to call almost everyone "old sport". But this time Gatsby was in no hurry to convince anyone. The shopkeepers and the wine merchants and his business partners were all more concerned about their own business prospects. If Gatsby was willing to negotiate a 5% discount, people would applaud even he claims himself as the Prince of England.  
Except for old money, no one is curious about where he's coming from, people are more concerned about the future. And unfortunately or fortunately, Gatsby, who had left New York, Daisy and Wolfsheim, had little chance of getting in touch with the old high society. The new money, those forces which Tom had feared and would not speak of directly, were still weak, but sensitive people had long since discovered the tremendous possibilities they contained. Gatsby became one of them. No one could laugh at his past amidst the current of the times, for all were black children who had crawled out of the dust heap. Many didn't even know what "old sport" represented, just consider it as a strange hobby of Gatsby's. Perhaps one day he would become someone. Maybe one day he will be the "great" Gatsby, and the title will mean something very different from the words I put down on paper with a sense of tribute. Or maybe Gatsby would finally be successful enough to become another Tom Buchanan. And I can only watch but not stop his transformation, could do nothing but stop my imagination slipping into a future that quivering at the edge of the horizon.  
I wasn't a total idler. Of course, Gatsby didn't mind my idleness, and even encouraged me to become a moving decoration in the castle. Allow me to quote him - "You do me the honour of just sitting there and reading, Nicky". This inevitably reminded me of the invitation he had sent me, and prompted me to increase the frequency of my correspondence with the editor. He was a young man in his late thirties, slightly older than me, but with a tone of voice that was too youthful for his own good. This did not diminish his professional aura. He assisted in the publication of twelve books, each of which became the best-selling myth of the year. Yet the famous editor, already established in the secular sense of the word, had fallen unilaterally in love with the Gatsby depicted in the book. Apparently, the magic of Gatsby himself, even when burned on paper, radiates infinitely around him.  
After I sent the manuscript for the ending, the poor, over-excited man called long-distance from across the country, spending ten dollars a minute just to denounce my "stone cold heart". He choked up, begged me to change the ending, and slammed the phone down when I refused. It's a strange experience - Gatsby's real death invites no guests, but its tragic end in a virtual work can be so emotionally moving. Maybe I should have written a draft of the novel and read it to every guy who answered the phone and handed out copies to all the fly-by-night reporters when I called. Maybe that would have made Gatsby's funeral more crowded than his party.  
A week later, the editor's regular comment letter arrived at the new house. I expected more fresh curses, but then he changed his tune and was full of praise, arguing that "a wonderful tragedy is the only ending worthy of him" and assuring that readers that would join him in weeping and cursing the author and then recommending the book to all their friends and relatives. I've never really believed that this book would sell well, and his "praise" makes me unsure if I even want it to sell well.


	5. Chapter 5

-5-  
At the beginning of April, the trees and grasses begin to stretch their boughs furiously. The world had had enough of the long winter, although the traces of the snow had not completely faded. Some wildflowers grew up all the way through the snow cover and opened up in the still-cold wind. Soon, the winter was gone like a dream.  
  
I heard that Tom and Daisy had finally finished their winter getaway and were back in New York. Jordan sent me a long letter on the subject, commenting on the summer's farce and suggesting that Tom had found a new lover in Florida with long black hair, but insisted on sending Daisy a fresh gift every day.  
  
It's all too bad. It was a great thing for you to leave New York. This summer has been a nightmare," Jordan concluded in her letter. I realized that Jordan still thinks Gatsby is dead to this day, and the reason I ran to Louisville was to escape this pain. It was almost the consensus of the whole New York thing, after all, I was making too many phone calls. I wondered if Daisy felt the same way, and believed that Gatsby must have visited his daisies.  
  
At the end of the letter, Jordan told me in rather succinct terms that she had found someone, and confirmed to me: "I dumped you, didn't I? Nick?"  
  
My reply said "you sure did". Although she never really had any real-thing with me, and we never really broke up. In the late winter and early fall months, Gatsby and the new novel crowded out all my waking hours, and I slept more with pneumonia than two Gatsbys combined. By the time I resumed correspondence with my old friends, Jordan's letters already showed the sadness characteristic of people in love. Neither of us was waiting for the other. That was the most attractive charm of the relationship; you could enter and leave it at will, and no one had the opportunity to morally condemn it. Everyone, however, was immersed in it and at the same time trying to get out.  
  
The fireplace in the living room is not yet extinguished. But the crowds of people who had been imprisoned all winter were all streaming out of their homes the moment the temperature hit freezing point, and running through the light green streets with their coats wrapped tightly around them. Brand new drugstore chains mushroomed from every street corner, and novelties filled the shelves. Living in the Midwest meant no one would buy hundreds of oranges at a time just to juice them with some weird mechine- however Gatsby's business was still as successful as he predicted. The spring was so sweet that even the poor people who walked into the drugstore were willing to splurge a little and spend two or three days of their wages on candy sodas for their families, not to mention the rich people who got off the bus to get supplies.  
  
I expected Gatsby to be busier than he had been during the winter, but he almost completely relaxed when spring came. There seemed to be no more business for him to attend to in person, and most of his orders were passed through a wooden handle telephone with a brass dial. My editor thought it was a good time to get the novel published, as people were in desperate need of something fresh to talk about and brag about, and nothing could be better than a hot new book. By the time the summer rolled around ...... every guy at every party in the coterie who didn't know about the new book would be ridiculed by his peers as an uneducated hick.  
  
With no knowledge of this expertise, I gave my editor carte blanche. He apparently misinterpreted my prevarication as trust, and his letters grew more enthusiastic. A week later he sent me a heavy wooden box containing a dozen uncut, rough-edged books to give away to friends at will. In the meantime, a hardcover edition of the book appeared on the shelves of bookstores in major cities, with dark green silk bookmark ribbon quivering in the breeze. I couldn't have been a more unknown author, yet readers would open the cover for the editor's name. I could become my editor's thirteenth success, or end up break his myth.  
  
Those books reminded me, once again, that I was desperately short of friends. Following my father's admonition, I always refrained from judgment and unilaterally absorbed the outgoing feelings of others. There were two consequences to this action. Some of the people who confided in me, after opening their hearts completely, would quickly retract and slam the door of their hearts in a hurry. These people will monitor my behavior and even lash out with slander. Even though I have never had the motivation or the inclination to reveal those secrets, they still expect to keep me completely separate from the rest of the world, so that no one else will know his secrets.  
  
If the reader finds these types of people repulsive, I must defend them. Repentance and lies are human instincts, in varying degrees of severity. The well-bred gentleman can only restrain his own behavior, but not the malice born in his spirit. What really bothers me is precisely another type of confessor - the one who treats me as his or her best friend, who expects me to accept their hidden emotions, and who peers into my hidden heart and expects me to offer them secrets of equal value. These good people, who did not know how to stay away in a timely manner and who had the best intentions for me, were the ones who made me want to run away the most during my college years. A few of them persisted in sending me letters after I graduated, which followed me like maggots through my military retirement, into the mailbox of my cabin in West Egg, under the door of the nursing home - and finally Gatsby's new house helped me to get rid of them.  
  
Perhaps they thought that friends meant complete transparency of heart, but I didn't feel any of the charm of such a relationship. I'm sure these people will gladly accept the uncut books I give out, and then the gardener will be shocked by the bursting mailbox on the lawn.  
  
In the end, the bookcase was still sadly half full. I managed to subtract only five books: three to Callaway's, one to Gatsby, and one to Jordan. I hesitated to send another copy to Daisy with a note that said, "Please read Pammy some bedtime stories," but finally gave up. As for Tom, I didn't even want him to see the book in the bookstore, let alone offer to send him a commemorative edition. It was a malicious omen, but my editor told me to relax as much as possible - my novel had gone out of stock in a number of territories, and New York State was selling particularly well.   
  
"That's not surprising at all. Everything that's hot sells extraordinarily well in New York." The editor is so passionate about disparaging New York that I sometimes think of the city as a pretty girl he flirted with and married some other man without any notification: "But you know nobody reads there. I don't know why they buy so many hardbacks back there.  
  
"Maybe they need to fill an endless library," I wrote back. and speculated in my reply, "or maybe someone is addicted to the smell of burning coated paper."  
  
Gatsby's business, the sales of my novel, the vitality of the people at ...... all sprouted with a big stretch of plant. For a little while, the world seemed to forget the graying past completely and was intent on making all the details perfect. I, too, was deceived by the intoxicating scent of spring into believing that the last summer was gone, that we were no longer being chased by the past, and that the tide was pushing us into the future - until Jordan wrote again.  
  
I thought she was inviting me to her wedding. But the letter was mostly blank, with only a few lines filled in: Daisy was pregnant again. But the atomsphere between her and Tom was bad. Tom still went to his new lover's apartment to have fun, and Daisy told him in an wild argument that she would rather hope it was someone else's baby.  
  
I think she's talking about Gatsby. Jordan writes that if it hadn't been for that funeral and Daisy was only three months pregnant ...... things would have gotten pretty ugly. She told me in the letter that she really wish she hadn't been tripped up by things.  
  
But Gatsby didn't really die. And I had no idea if he was still in contact with Daisy. He had hinted that Pammy was a reason for his despair over their relationship ...... Would Gatsby have wanted to make a lovely Pammy for himself?  
  
I didn't really believe this assumption, but I couldn't help but get up.  
  
"...... Do you know where Gatsby is?"  
  
The housekeeper hesitated slightly for a moment, then said respectfully, "Sir, the first master bedroom is on the second floor. Would you like me to take you there?"  
  
I refused him.


	6. Chapter 6

-6-  
  
"Jay."  
  
A slight sound of fabric rubbing. Gatsby opened the door wrapped in a bathrobe, with a half-wet towel over his shoulder, and hadn't had time to dry his hair. It was a rare sight to see him unadorned and slightly ostentatious. He shielded my view of the room with his body, as if there was some secret in the room that needed to be concealed urgently.  
  
"What is it, old sport ?" Gatsby asked softly, without any resentment of being disturbed, and even with a slight longing: "How can I help you? Anything?"  
  
Under his sincere gaze, all my suspicions turned to a dark insult. Questioning his relationship with Daisy, or even his relationship with the unborn baby, became more difficult than walking straight out the door and shooting a passerby. I suspected that I was about to take a foolish and wrong step into a trap that I shouldn't have gone through and wasn't even made for me.  
  
"Is this about the letter?" Gatsby's gaze slid down my sleeve and landed on my hand, which was hold up in the air. I realized that I was crumpling Jordan's letter into a paper ball and untangled my fingers immdiately. Gatsby took hold of my arm to remove the paper and touched my palm with concern. I guess he was worried of whether I have a fever again. But when his eyes touched Jordan's handwriting - all expression faded from those light blue eyes like a tidal wave.  
  
For a few seconds, he looked like a statue, and subconsciously clutched my wrist. But soon, Gatsby smiled again. A very hard, but stiff and numb smile.  
  
"Nick." He said, "Come in."  
  
Gatsby's bedroom was a little cooler than the second bedroom. There was a slightly worn-out book on a small coffee table beside him, and an ink bottle and fountain pen not far away, both uncapped. He put the book in the cupboard and returned to cap the pen before I could cast more eyes in that direction. I watched him like a ghost as he tested the temperature of the tea, and then withdrew his hand to his forehead in silence. He seemed to have completely forgotten my presence, yet quickly pointed to the bed, gesturing for me to take a seat, and collapsed into the only wooden chair available. It was a summer high-backed chair, unpadded, with only a modest blanket hanging over it. Gatsby's eyelashes did not quivered for even a little bit as he smashed his elbows on the hardwood armrests.  
  
"It's been so many years."  
  
Gatsby said suddenly after a long time of completely silence. He was still staring at his exposed knees outside his bathrobe, talking almost entirely to himself, most likely unaware that he was speaking his mind out. The suffocating feeling in my gut, and the habit of actively avoiding the overly open hearts of others, made me want to rush to the window and jump; or calmly walk out the door and never come back. But my body remained anchored reasonless between the silken surface of the bed and the soft bedding of an unknown material.  
  
"I am Myrtle. I thought I was her lawful husband, but everyone think ...... Jordan feels the same way ...... I'm the redheaded girl, right?" He said, obviously not needing my answer.  
  
I could only stare at one strand of Gatsby's blond hair and watch droplets of water looking like little diamonds slowly pooled in the tips, fell into the carpet, and repeated, only slightly smaller than the last. Endless silence once again filled the bedroom, and though reluctantly, I felt obliged to take the initiative and lead him on.  
  
"Daisy married Buchanan," I prompted softly.  
  
"Yes-yes. She's married to Tom Buchanan." Gatsby murmured. He looked up at me, but focused somewhere behind me, gazing across the egg-white walls of the room and over the fence and the shadows of the trees. The colors of the sky dripped onto his irises, trying to break through the eyeballs.  
  
"They have a child and there will be more. They were married, it was on newspapers, I knew all about it. And yet I feel like she's still mine, just my Daisy. With long hair and skipping down the stairs like a bird," Gatsby said lightly. He thought for a moment about something I couldn't fathom, then crossed his fingers and politely asked me, "I shouldn't have been around her again. Five years, and I actually expect to turn back time. I'm a pure fool, aren't I, Nick? I screwed everything up."  
  
I grabbed my wrist, the part that had just been bruised by Gatsby's pinch, making the skin scream in my sleeve.  
  
"You didn't know Daisy was ...... pregnant."  
  
"I haven't contacted her in a long time, old friend. Since the day I died. I searched for her new address when I woke up. But that was pointless. For a while - the days when I still had to go out in a wheelchair - I checked the mailbox at the cottage in West Egg every day. There were times when I was close to being discovered by Wolfsheim's people. But they wouldn't actually enter the house, because it was a complete wreck. The chandelier had fallen on the tiles in the front room, the crystal was smashed to pieces, and no one had put it back up. No one called, no one wrote. Why should I bother her, when she had happily forgotten me? I was just a summer nightmare. A ghost of five years ago. I can't even afford to throw all-night parties anymore. What am I to her now?"  
  
I didn't know what to say, so I just blurted out - "you're still a rich guy."

And Daisy, if she ever really had the ability to love, always fall in love with rich guys.  
  
He smiled at me.  
  
"You've got it wrong, Nicky," Gatsby said gently, sitting up straight. "I'm a businessman now. Selling small things, sneaking in liquor. Maybe I'll try to meet some of the movie stars later, I like to see the stories on film. But I don't touch Wall Street bankers anymore, I don't reach into those bonds and futures, I'm not a crook anymore. You know I used to be a crook. But then Hermes wouldn't be able to take care of me. Maybe I could be a rich man, with possibilities. But Daisy is made by pure gold, she didn't need possibilities. She wanted real money to keep her afloat in mid-air. Only real estate and diamonds can keep her voice girlishly innocent. I would give her my whole future, but I have no present and no past."  
  
The collection of details, his soothing expressions, and even his unabashed criticism of the past all struck me as strange. Death brought about at least one dramatic change in him: Gatsby began to learn to distinguish between the past and the future. His eyes no longer fell on the past, which he could not retrieve, but which he could never part with. He had held his love for Daisy and his hatred of his origins in his hands for a moment, and would not let go. But now they were finally put into a high cabinet of memory and locked in different boxs.  
  
Perhaps for the first time since his birth, Gatsby's hand was empty again. Unlike in the past, this time he had various of beautiful futurea at his fingertips.


	7. Chapter 7

-7-  
"You've changed a lot."  
"It's hard to get nothing back after dying once."  
"Even if nothing has changed, you've gotten at least one scar from ....... The mark of death itself is worth marveling at."  
Gatsby looked at me in confusion.  
"You mean the scar from the gunshot wound?" He pressed his left chest and hesitated.  
"Yes." I said.  
"...... I watched it slowly heal. It didn't start out as a healable wound, just a bloody hole. I've seen a lot of gunshot wounds, and no one could survive a wound like that. When I see a dying man, I know that I can see if he'll ever get back up again."  
Gatsby looked at me softly, if not somewhat compassionately, without saying a word. His gaze would show anyone that he was perfectly safe. Secrets confided in his presence would remain forever hidden, and the next day even he himself would act as if he knew nothing. It was as if my vocal cords did not vibrate. I was just meditating on these facts, and Gatsby could hear my thoughts directly.  
"When those doctors told me to help you prepare for your funeral, I was quick to accept. Gatsby - you will die. I knew that from the moment I saw your body. They said the bullet didn't go through your heart, but they hadn't seen war. If a military doctor had stood there, he would have understood, as I did, that you were dead, even though you were still breathing." I suppressed my words so that they wouldn't all fly out like bullets, end up no one could figure out what I was screaming about, "I accepted your death. While you were still alive, I had come to believe that you would die, perhaps I actually expected you to die."  
The carpets in this room must have been hand-woven from Persia, and each square centimeter was more expensive than an equivalent weight of gold. Otherwise Gatsby could never have walked quietly to the bedside and knelt silently beside my calf. He is quieter than a piece of snow falling. Only half a decibel noisier than its melting.  
He saved my wrist from my own abuse and held it in his own hand. If Gatsby uttered a single word, made any meaningless humming sound, I could stop these naked self-evaluations. But he, like a statue, was there and only there. The sapphire was so delicately set in his marble eye sockets that no one would be afraid to speak to a statue to himself.  
"How did you survive? I don't understand. A wound can not be cured healed. I watched it abscess, and God, Gatsby, I watched you become more and more dead every day. But you came back from the dead, and so I became - one - who expected you to die."  
Even though I am God of the novel, I still push the protagonist into the pool, the dead leaves swirling with the pale pink water. I expect the death of Gatsby, but the real Gatsby reopens his eyes, so I have to kill the fictional one instead. It didn't stem from hatred, but I did long for an end. A point that would separate that summer, Mortel, Daisy, Tom, the memory of five years ago, the story I had mistakenly stepped into that did not belong to me, from me.  
I almost cursed him.  
"But I'm alive." Gatsby took off half of his bathrobe, revealing bare skin, especially the chest part, "I never blamed you, nor did I think you were guilty. And even if you did, I would forgive the parts of it that concern me. I'm grateful to you, Nick."  
Gatsby was pale. The sun had once left sunburn marks on this body, turning him a decent honey color. Until death and sunless convalescence, and too long a winter, washed away the color that had once been there. On his chest, dark pink fleshy scars stretched out like creeping plants, pulling twisted folds out of the otherwise flat skin around them, destroying their integrity. From a distance, it looked as if the devil had stamped his chest, giving rise to speculation as to what he had exchanged his soul for. It is not completely ugly, yet it will be hated by mainstream, and its twisted beauty can only be appreciated by certain abstract painters or sadistic young people. But scars mean healing. On a dead body, the wound will retain its original form, waiting only for maggots to destroy it.  
"Maybe my life was under a spell. So I didn't die on the battlefield, and the magic didn't wear off when I returned to America." Gatsby removed the other side of his bathrobe with him, kneeling almost completely naked at my feet, the layers of crocheted fabric barely covering his thighs, "Look at this. Wilson's not the first guy to leave me a bullet hole."  
Gatsby pointed to his abdomen, off to the side of his waist, where there was an old scar. It was far smaller than the scar next to his heart, but also made the skin around it clump together. It was obvious that there had been a bullet there.  
In fact, I don't think about war most of the time. They say that veteran suffer from all kinds of mental illnesses, but I forgot all about the battlefield the moment I stepped on American soil. The smoke, the sound of artillery, the fellow soldiers cowering at the bottom of the trenches, hiding their fears, making dirty jokes at each other. Gray skies, gray people, faces stained with wet mud; the only thing that was bright and colorful was blood, and even blood can only end up mixed with mud. The battlefield swallows up everything beyond the dirt. These memories are so deeply engraved, that even when the war is mentioned and stories are told, the real memories remain asleep.  
But those who enter the battlefield stay within it forever, no matter dead or on the oppsite. A gun with dry blood on it, a hand stretched out from the grave ...... and the bullets and the howls and the mixture of mud and tiny bits of flesh will reappear, as vivid as if the war had just ended yesterday, or as if one can realizes that reality was only a dream as soon as they open their eyes.  
Gatsby's wound, not the huge star-shaped scar Wilson had left, but the relatively inconspicuous one on his flank, made me felt like we were huddled face to face at the bottom of a trench. Stray bullets flied over our head and leaving long beight orange trails in the smoke.  
He raised his hand to my neck and nudged me.  
I lowered my head, and the past and present and future overlapped before my eyes. In the blurred world, there were only Gatsby's eyes, streaming the color of the sky - no dirt, dust, or wounds, just a continuous stream of pure blue swirling in circles.  
...... I was half-kneeling on the edge of the bed, Gatsby gripping the side of my waist, my tie dangling from his wrist. Tiny chills irritated the exposed skin.  
"I never thought you had so many scars on you." He whispered, stroking one of the light brown lines on my right thigh.  
"I've never been seriously wounded. Just some shrapnel ...... cold weaponry."  
"Have you ever been to the Argonne Forest?"  
"...... maybe ......"  
When I woke up on the morning, my hand was still seized his hair. Gatsby murmured occasionally with right hand clenched in a fist.

**Author's Note:**

> please leave notes(ง ˙o˙)ว


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